Heather Turner, CEO & Co-founder, Tamarack Capital Partners, interviewed by Lan Elliott - It's Personal Stories, A Hospitality Podcast (1)

Introduction and Career Inflection Points

00:00Hello and welcome to DEI Advisors. My name is Lam Elliott on behalf of DEI Advisors, which is an Arizona nonprofit dedicated to empowering personal success. And today I'm delighted to have Heather Turner as our guest advisor. And Heather is the CEO and co-founder of Tamarack Capital Partners, which is a privately held hospitality real estate investment firm that currently owns and manages 11 full service hotels and resorts. So welcome, Heather. Thank you. Thank you, Lynn. Thanks so much for inviting me to join you. Absolutely. I've been really looking forward to this interview for a while now. So happy to be here today. Now, I know you have a very interesting career journey. When I looked at it, I realized you started working in Kyoto. You've worked at Disney twice. You've worked at private equity firms before you co-founded Tamarack.

01:00role. But could you share with us some of the inflection points in your career and what were their particular factors that contributed to your success? Sure. My first job out of college was with the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Kyoto, Japan. And I think... One of the great things about that was it was incredibly scary to go do and set me up to feel like just about any other challenge is much more achievable and reasonable than taking a job in a foreign language. When I was decent at Japanese, but I wasn't at a place where I should have been negotiating government contracts in Japanese. And that's what a big part of my job was. And so I think starting out that way set me up to feel like, oh, you can do that. You can run with anything.

01:47applying for a job that you're not qualified for is something that men are much more likely to do than women. But I think having applied for and gotten that as my very first job, that's a little bit of part of my approach to things. Don't wait until you feel 100% confident in that you can do the job, kind of jump in and give it a try. And if someone will give you a shot, then I think that's a really positive thing. After that, I went to work for the Walt Disney Company for the first time, as you mentioned, and then off to business school. and back to Disney. And similarly, when I got into hotel real estate investing, it was with a firm called Merritt's Wolf. And when I was being interviewed there, one of the founders said, you were good.

02:26negotiator because that's what we do a lot of. And I was like, oh, I don't think so. And he said, why not? And I was like, because I really only negotiate for the Walt Disney Company and we have something nobody else has. So our leverage is... out of balance. And that makes my job really easy. So if I had a fair playing field, I'm not sure how good I would be. So once again, I knew I didn't necessarily have all the skills I needed for that job, but applied for and was given the opportunity and haven't really looked back. So I've been doing hotel real estate investing for the last 22 years or so and really enjoying it. That's fantastic. And I love what you talked about, which was that you jumped into something even when you didn't know if you could do it. And so I love your approach to challenges, which is what I wanted to talk about next. How do you approach challenges when you come upon them? What's your mindset? What what do you do first? How do you think about it? Yeah, I think we've had lots of challenges in the hotel space in the last few years.

Approaching Challenges and Teamwork

03:32I think about who else in my organization, in the – kind of in the deal at large can be of value in overcoming the challenge. And so how do we all – put our heads together and figure something out together. And I think that kind of teamwork approach, whether it is, tapping into a resource at one of the brands or at one of our capital partners. We have the benefit of being surrounded by a lot of very intelligent, professional people who are pretty exceptional. And so we have the opportunity, I think, to punch a little bit above our own weight in terms of pulling together groupthink and coming out with good outcomes by doing so. That's great. Thank you. Thank you for that. Along those lines, taking risks, you don't get to where you are today without taking risks. And you've talked about some of them. Can you share a little bit about an example of success in taking a risk and how you prepare yourself mentally to take a chance on something?

Risk-Taking: Skydiving and Starting Tamarack

04:32Sure. Let me think of some. I don't want to talk about just a personal story and one that's a little bit more business oriented. Um, When I was a senior in college, my roommate and I decided to go skydiving. And I think it was, I think we were actually probably invited by some other people. But the two of us said, we're about to go apply for our first job, so why don't we do this? to reset our sense of risk. I was fortunate I didn't face a lot of adversity growing up, and so this was something that I felt like was a way for me to say, okay, even in a really risky circumstance, I'm going to be fine. And so right before job interviews, we went skydiving, which was a ton of fun and I think also helps put things in perspective.

05:18Right. You're jumping out of a moving aircraft with the L's and a parachute on your back and landing it fine. And if you think about that, you're about to jump into a new risk. I think. That kind of mindset is helpful. Yeah, I've had someone describe that kind of thing as level two fun. It's the thing that's fun when you look back on it, not while you're doing it in the moment. That's a great way to describe it, level two fun. And I think in terms of taking risks professionally, you know, striking out on our own and starting Tamarai Capital Partners certainly felt like a big risk at the time. I think we had no idea the pandemic was coming, so we didn't know how big of a risk it was. But it was the type of thing that I spent a lot of time thinking about. It was probably a year or so of planning and preparation and probably –

06:07six to nine months of negotiating my exit with my prior firm, because we did it in a very friendly way. And one of the ways that we try to mitigate risk in our company, we raise capital on a deal-by-deal basis. So we're what most people would call an operating partner. And we come in with a small portion of the capital, and we're looking for somebody else to put in the majority of the capital. And in exchange, we'll do the vast majority of the hard work. And I think our biggest risk in spinning out of an old firm and starting a new one was, how do you do that and not alienate your capital partners who have kind of gotten you to where you are today? And what we did want to do was leave those folks behind, say, we're going to go start a new firm.

06:48and you're going to be left with whoever's left at the old firm while we take off on our new adventure. So good luck on those deals that you did with us for the last five or ten years. So we were able to structure something that was really – I think fairly unique in the industry and quite productive for both sides in which we brought along all of our responsibility for the deals that we've done for the last five or 10 years that we still own. So we kept those capital partners best interest at heart and made sure that we were continuing to asset manage and portfolio manage and execute on the dispositions of those deals properly. while looking at new deals under our new banner and our first three deals that we did at Samarack were with repeat capital partners that we had done work with before at Dinak, and we tried it.

Developing Your Network

07:34Thank you. I love that you, the way you looked at it and the way you set up your company, you're always looking for the win-win and you were able to not only preserve those old relationships, but carry them forward. into your new company. And it flows right into the next thing I wanted to talk about, which is about developing your network. And we actually met negotiating across the table from one another. And I definitely found you to be always looking for the win-win, always really calm, always really thoughtful about your approach and how to find a way forward for both parties. And I know in terms

08:17uncomfortable. How have you developed your network in a way that works for you and suits your personality? Yeah, I don't play golf. So I don't do some of the more traditional real estate networking events, and I recognize that. But I do really like some of the smaller forum-type things like the AHLA Roundtable Hotel Asset Managers Association. I was very involved in that organization for many years, less so now, but... ULI, those types of groups where you can get to know people when you're not in the middle So that when you are in the middle of the deal, you have a little bit of foundation to work with them on. I actually find, and this kind of goes to, we're spending a lot of time analyzing things.

08:59whether large conferences and conventions and things like that are going to come back and be quite as robust as they always used to be. And personally, I find them to be very effective. So NYU and Alice and those types of things. I find those to be great uses of time because you get the opportunity to see lots of people in a short period of time. But frankly, it's not always fun. Like networking is not always fabulous. I went to an industry dinner one time. And I walked in a room of 200 or 300 people, and there were three women there. And that was really uncomfortable, but I felt like I've got to stay because if I don't stay, nobody's going to invite the next person. a dozen or so women, and it's not going to help if I turn around and leave the building when I see that kind of thing. Thankfully, I found a handful of people who were fun, and we sat down and had a chat. And I find if you make it a little bit smaller, if you're not trying to be out there,

09:52meeting everybody every five minutes or trying to boil the whole ocean in terms of building your network. Break it down to a little. of a smaller group and you'll I think, generate more meaningful relationships, and hopefully those relationships then beget more business and, you know, That's the whole purpose of the networking. It's fun to meet people that you enjoy and create friendships, and it's also really productive to... meet people who can be a part of your business going forward. Now, I think that's really smart to to look at it on a smaller basis to say, OK, I'm Not boiling ocean, like you said, try and look at it, find a small group and then develop relationships from that from there. I think that is really a great way to start. But I also think the way that you handle yourself throughout the business piece of it, having worked on a deal with you. I think that just speaks volumes and how you treat people and how you handle yourself. And I think that provides a lot of credibility and that people want to work with you again.

10:57about this topic that I think is important for people who might be starting out earlier in their career and looking for how they... get started on the networking. If there's an organization or an association that speaks to you or your role in business, try to volunteer to be more than just a member of it. So, volunteer to organize one of the events, volunteer to be an officer in the organization, or do whatever you can because I think – Once you start to give a little extra rather than just being an attendee, you tend to get a lot more out of it and make more meaningful relationships out. Yeah, that's a really thoughtful way to approach it. I love that. The more you put into it is you'll get more out of it. And I think that's reflective of a lot of situations. But I think it's a great way to think about networking, especially if you're new into a city or you're new to a group of people.

Overcoming Self-Doubt

11:48Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about overcoming self-doubt because sometimes we're our own biggest critics. How do you handle that noise in your head if you get negative thoughts? How do you push that down and move forward? That's an interesting question because I think that to some extent self-doubt is a good thing, right? You need to be somewhat measured. There are – we all know those people are out there, and they're often wrong but never in doubt. And I think some of those folks run headstrong into – mistakes and so a little bit of self-doubt is a very positive thing and trying to find that balance i think is really the key um I think one thing that when I was applying to business school, I had gone to public schools my whole life, and I felt like everybody else applying had been at boarding school and prep school and the Ivy League before they got there. And so I found that to be a period of a lot of self-doubt, walking into that classroom for the first time in a well-known business school. And I thought, oh, my gosh, I'm never going to be able to keep up.

12:58um But it works out. Sometimes you have to try a little harder and sometimes you have to put in a little bit more work and people might have had a different path than you. But certainly, I think it goes back in some ways to. Being willing to take a chance on yourself and giving it a try. I do think having some self-doubt is a positive thing. If it gets to the point where is incapacitating and it makes you unable to make decisions and make choices and move forward, then that would be a big challenge. And I think the self-doubt definitely comes around in times like we've had for the last few years where we think, I thought we'd see a huge exodus of capital from the hotel space because there had always been this theoretical risk that revenue would go to zero. And that theory was proven out in many hotels. It's funny. And they.

13:49that creates a lot of doubt. But then when you look at it in a bigger picture of the dynamics of what was going on with return and yield and the fact that at that time we were in a very low interest rate environment and There was not much yield from other types of asset classes. We actually saw a pretty big inflow of capital into the hotel space immediately after things started opening back up. And that also helps because sometimes in our business, we tend to get very myopic. And we might get really down into the details of whether it's an individual deal or an individual contract. challenge and taking a step back and saying, OK, if I think about it more from a global flow of capital perspective, how appealing is this?

14:29relative to other opportunities. Instead of looking at it just from a whole sugar, this thing just went to zero. Yeah. And I think it was definitely a period of time that a lot of hospitality leaders leaned on one another because none of us had been through that experience of revenues going to zero. And one of the great things about the industry is that although we are competitive, I think it is an industry where people can also be collaborative

14:59I had a lot of very interesting conversations. I remember because I was working from home, as many of us were. So I'm in my home office and I was talking to people who had one hotel and two chief investment officers of the biggest REITs and everybody in between. Everybody just commiserating and checking in and how are you handling this? And what do you think about that? And it was that part of it felt good and felt positive. Yeah, I think leaning on each other really helped in that moment of time when we all had self-doubt of what was going to happen in the industry. I wanted to talk a little bit about a common generalization, which is that women don't do a good job of advocating for ourselves. And that impacts women's ability to get promotions and to advance in areas that they would like to.

Advocating for Yourself

15:51Can you share perhaps a story about a time when you succeeded in advocating for yourself? how you approached it, what steps you took. Sure. A long time ago, and I was very early in hotel investing. There was a situation where I... Came into a deal a little bit late, so I didn't have any built-in promote in the deal. But I worked on it from like the day after it was acquired to the day we sold it many years later and lots of ups and downs. And I think. Humbly, lots of value added in that time. And when we were looking to sell it, I basically went to the head of my firm and I said, I'm I know it doesn't say so in the contract, but I really think the right thing to do here is to give me some piece of the promote.

16:42And that did not go well. My conversation did not go well initially. And I was very disappointed. And I went back again. And I said, no, I really disagree with your conclusion. I think that's... wrong and I didn't threaten to quit because frankly I didn't have a plan and I didn't want to quit. I didn't want to quit my job. So I didn't have that big club in terms of leverage, but, um, I went back after the initial conversation was really hard and I was quite hurt by it. And I said, I just I really disagree with you. And I think that's wrong. And I would like you to reconsider. And. I'm happy to talk to Capital Partners, I'm happy to bring anybody to the table to share with you. My value add what I did across this just in case maybe you're one step too far removed to really see how this all went down. Maybe I haven't made my case very well for myself, but I will bring you others who will support my argument. And I ended up doing that. All right, let me see what they have to say. And it was.

17:50I remember it probably took me a week to make the phone call to ask somebody to call my boss to ask him on my behalf because I was so uncomfortable with that ask. But I just could not sleep at night thinking that deal was going to go down and it was going to be of no benefit to me personally at all and everybody else was going to have this very nice outcome. So it was an uncomfortable situation, but I think the thing that I learned from it was going back the second time. felt better than taking the no the first time and letting it roll that way. That's so interesting. I think a lot of people, once they got the courage to go up and ask the first time if the answer was no... They probably would not have thought to go back or go back and sit and think about what more can I bring to the table to bolster my position that I should be compensated additionally. So I love that you did that and that you went back in and that you came up with a plan of how to support further support your position that you deserved a piece of that deal when it was sold.

18:57Yep.

Balancing Assertiveness and Kindness

19:02One of the challenges that women leaders tend to face is this perception that you can't be both competent and kind. For example, if you're too nice, you're not strong enough to be a leader. If you're a bit too strong as a woman, you can come off as strong. as not being friendly enough to be successful in developing networks. And so there is this idea of an assertiveness double bind. You need to be just assertive enough, but not too much. And as I mentioned, we've negotiated on deals together. How do you find that balance. How do you walk that tightrope? Because you do a really good job with it. That's nice of you to say. I've had people tell me that I'm very diplomatic. And when I hear that, I think maybe I'm on the too nice end of that scale.

19:52You're very firm, Heather. I can tell you that. You're not too nice.

20:00So I'm not sure that I have any secret sauce, to be honest with you on this. I know that it is something that a lot of people struggle with, particularly a lot of women, because of that kind of stereotype, if you will. I'm not a particularly emotional person about work, quite emotional about my family and my daughter and my husband and those types of things. But I don't get really emotional about work. I get disappointed or excited or happy, but I'm not one to jump on a phone and scream and yell at people or cry or those types of things. So I think naturally my range when it comes to work things is somewhere in the middle. And hopefully that has helped me to not be perceived as too much of a wimp or far too assertive.

20:46But I do worry a little bit when I hear that diplomacy word that I'm leaning too soft. so maybe what happens is I hear that and I push a little harder to try make sure I don't get pigeonholed down at the soft end of the spectrum yeah there is always that balance am I being too nice am I being too much and I think you do such a good job and I love the idea actually of being diplomatic and thinking about it in that way and I also love the way you often approach things with a win-win point of view and always very willing to listen to the other person's point of view and take that on in a really thoughtful way. Thank you. I appreciate that. One of my favorite stories when you mentioned win-win, I thought of, we owned a hotel that was on the ground lease with the city

Win-Win Negotiation Story

21:35and we had a right under the lease to buy it out. And there was a prescribed approach to how that would be valued, right? So we go through that valuation process. We had our appraiser, they had theirs, and we had to get a third because they didn't agree. And the number came out very favorable to us in the end. So we had our attorneys draw out the documents. We sent it to the city, and I got a call from the mayor's office, and they said, she's not going to sign it. I was like, what are you talking about? She's not going to sign it. I was like, okay, can I talk to her? And they're like, you can't talk to her unless you come in person in two weeks. So I was like, okay, I'll come in person in two weeks. So I go, and she says, there was a blank lot that sold

22:14nearby for X. So there's no way I can sell you this land for what the Supreme Court came back at because it political suicide I cannot have that in the press And I was like do you disagree with the methodology Because the issue was our land was valued as if you built a high hotel on it So what the residual land value which is completely different than you have a blank slate piece of land over here And she said, yeah, but I can't explain that in a newspaper article. I'm like, okay, I get that. So I was like, oh, so we go away and we think about it. And this was one where we called in our capital partners, and we all had a big brainstorm about it. And that particular property was also attached to a convention center that the city owned, but the property that we owned managed for them for a fee.

22:58So we came up with this idea. We went back to them and said, hey, we can pay you a lot more for the land so that your headline number works for you. If you pay us a lot more for the annual service of managing the convention center, because that's going to go into our P&L, and we're going to cap that when we exit. So we're going to make back what we pay you. I didn't tell it that whole part, but we're going to make, I'll tell you guys, we're going to make back what they pay us times a nice multiple. That was how we found a win-win in that situation. So the hotel ended up getting a much nicer fee stream on a long-term basis for the city. And in exchange, we could afford to pay the city more for the ground.

23:36And we got what we really wanted was to have a fee simple hotel, which is obviously great for the cap rate. It's your cap rate significantly. and a little bit better fee stream on the side that we could cap at that lower rate and made the whole thing make economic sense. And she was happy with it. We rewrote the agreement. She signed it and off we went. There are so many good things in that one story that you just shared in terms of being persistent, asking to speak with her, going in to meet with her, hearing her side of the story, and then bringing in other people to brainstorm and get ideas to find the win-win and looking at how they perceive value and ways that you could create value in a way that you could both come away with a great result for what you needed.

24:25So many great lessons in that one story. So thank you for sharing that. I wanted to spend a little bit of time on leadership. One of the things I've noticed is that women tend to have a bit of a different style than men. And a couple things that you did when you set up Tamarack, I thought were really interesting. One of them was that you invited the team members who were working with you to join as partners. And another thing I heard you speak about is trying to ensure that you more junior people who are doing a lot of hard work They usually the ones that are burning the midnight oil when a deal has to get done You really intentional about making sure that they appropriately compensated I just find this really highly collaborative, team-oriented focus is a strength that I see a

Leadership Style and Flat Organizations

25:19lot in women leaders. What character or leadership style do you look for on your team for your leaders in your company? Yeah, I think one of the things that drove me to co-found Tamarack was the idea that it was going to be hard to keep a team of highly motivated, excellent professionals together for an extended period of time unless we could figure out a structure that worked for them financially. And so that was one of the motivating factors, honestly, was how do we keep the team together and keep people motivated and excited? Because that's hard to do over a long period of time. And I think it may be a female quality. I'm not entirely sure, but I can tell you I was very uncomfortable with the idea of naming the company Turner Capital or HCT Capital

26:11or something like that. And I look around and honestly, most of my, or many of my colleagues and friends who are men have companies that they name after themselves. And I don't know, I couldn't do it. And I think that is somewhat of a symptom of a leadership style, if you will, in that I am much more comfortable in a team environment than I am in a pyramid type shape. We have a very flat organization. We all talk with each other all the time. It's not, you don't have to go up any particular channel of communication. In a lot of ways, I learned the opposite lesson when I was at Disney because it was such a huge organization. And if you got a certain title, you got a different type of stationery. And if you got

26:57the next title, you got a different chair in your office. Like it was really so big and so structured that it's laughable now, but it was true. And people were like, and you knew this was a way, it was like a little bit of subliminal messaging. This was also before email was as prevalent as it is now. If you got a memo from somebody, you knew what their title was based on their stationery. You didn't even have to try to dig or figure it out. How senior is this person? As soon as the memo came into your we have paper inboxes and as soon as your memo came into the inbox you knew what their stationery was It was very hierarchical and very strict in that way And I recall when I first went to Merritt's Wolf, the first time I was doing hotel

27:40private equity, I said to the assistant in the office, I was like, so who does this? And she's like, I think you do. I was like, do I make a presentation to anyone to do this? She's like, I think you just decide. I was like, okay, good. Let me work on that. And so from that time forward, I was like, this is so interesting. Everybody, every level of the organization can just make decisions and move forward. And I think that is a leadership style that I appreciate much more than a hierarchical one. And I think giving people the opportunity to make sure that they get a lot of exposure to what we really do as opposed to just their silos is important in helping people develop as holistic real estate investors. And

28:18And I think it's good for our company, and I think it's good for their careers, too. Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, I love that story. And I love the story about Disney and how hierarchical it was. And I don't know if that was a sign of the times back then or if that was just the size of the company. I remember there was a moment in my career where I worked at a company where I was told that the men in the company would come in and count your ceiling tiles to see how important you were. And if you had more ceiling tiles than them. And that blew my mind. I didn't know that everything was a competition at that point. But I learned pretty fast. But it was a very different world in time. Yeah, that's funny. I guess they could tell the square footage of your office.

Creating Inclusive Cultures

29:02That's right. Every time you got a promotion. Exactly. Let's continue a little bit with inclusive cultures, because a topic that we've discussed is the importance of creating inclusive culture. so that diverse people can thrive. And diversity can be so many different things, right? It doesn't have to just be race or gender. It could be diversity of thought, background. There's lots of different ways that teams can be diverse. And similar to how you've pushed your career in a really intentional way, you're also very intentional about giving women and underrepresented groups opportunities, all things being equal, that you're going to give them the opportunity. And you do things such as hosting a dinner before the Alice Conference for Women.

29:54What are some of the key things that you think that leaders or even managers of teams can do to create a more inclusive workplace. Yeah. Um, I do try to, if we are considering whether it's designers or lawyers or bankers or whatever it is, all things being equal, if there's a more diverse candidate and a less diverse candidate, I would rather do business with the more diverse candidate because I honestly, I think sometimes people, I think sometimes They try harder. They work harder. And if they're as qualified and as good as the less diverse candidate, I would like to be able to. saying that we help promote women, people of color, and that type of thing in our organization and do it with our dollars because when we're spending the kind of money that we spend on legal counsel, for example, we want to do it in a very thoughtful way. One place where I think we fall down, honestly, when I look across our portfolio is we don't have

30:48many women or diverse people as general managers of our hotels. And I actually think that the... The brands and the third-party managers actually do a pretty good job of promoting diverse people through their ranks, certainly better than on the investment side. In the private equity world and the investment world, there are very few women or people of color making the ultimate investment decisions. But, Somehow in our firm, we have it backwards. I'm not sure how that happens. We've got women on the investment side. And then at the hotel level, we have a little bit less diverse representation. So it's something that caught my eye. The last time we had a slate of GM candidates be presented to us by a brand. And I was like, I have a choice of three white men.

31:35Why do I have, why can't I get more choices? And it's hard when you're not the employer, but it is a question that I like to ask and push for. And on the investment side, I think it's very important. And whenever I meet particularly young women in their early in their careers, I try to encourage them stay in the investment lane. I think that. Asset management is a phenomenal business, and that's where I started and then moved over to the investment side. But if you are already on the investment side, don't step out because you think you're going to. peek out early or hit some kind of wall, stay in that space that might be a little bit harder, a little bit less well-represented. As long as you can, as long as you're comfortable, because I think it is important for people.

32:21women who are early in their career to feel like they have an opportunity to stay in that space where they have a chance to make the real investment decisions, which goes back to risk-taking that we were talking about earlier. It goes back to a lot of things that we talked about. You've got to be willing to stand up and say, I believe in this enough that we're going to invest X millions of dollars to do it. And I really hope we see a lot more women on that side of the business. And in the meantime, we'll work on the other side at our firm. I agree. I'd love to see more women. There were very few when I came up on the investment side,

32:58attorneys. The deal that we worked on together had a lot of women on it on the deal side, but also I think All the attorneys were women on that particular deal. And it was the one that I've done that was just very unique for that reason. It was one where you get on the phone and you can't, you know, a lot of times you can tell who's speaking because there's only one woman across the table. But before everybody did it on Zoom, where your name lights up or where your face is there, it was just a regular conference call. I wonder who that is. It's true. You had to really learn everybody's voices when it was all women on the phone call. One of our favorite questions at DEI Advisors is what advice would you give to your younger self?

33:42What advice do I give to my younger self? I would probably say keep trying new things. Don't be afraid to try new things. Because I think some of my more interesting turns in my career and in my life has been when I try really challenging new unusual things. And when I have stayed put or studied for too long, it starts to get a little dull and it starts to get a little bit less productive. When you get into too big of a comfort zone, it's not necessarily a good thing. So sometimes I hear people say, oh, I've been doing the same job for 30 years. And I think, oh, no. It can't be good for anybody. So I would advise my younger self, keep trying new things and try more of them. I think jumping out of a plane was maybe a good way to set that goal for your career. Heather, I could actually talk to you for a really long time. I always learn something when I talk with you and I really enjoy it. But we're coming to the end of our time. Could you share with our audience maybe one final piece of advice, keeping in mind that DEI Advisors' mission is focused around empowering personal success? What advice would you offer to women and underrepresented groups who are looking to advance their careers?

Advice to Younger Self and Final Thoughts

35:02I think one of my favorite pieces of advice is take as many negotiations classes as you can, because. You are going to be, no matter what you do in this industry, you are going to be negotiating, whether it's for yourself or a sales contract for your hotel. or an acquisition contract, or... Buying out a piece of land from a city, trying to think about ways that you can become a better negotiator will help you in your personal career when you're negotiating your cut of the deal or your salary or your how many tiles are in your office. And will certainly help you to navigate the world of hotel transactions or hotel operations because they are important. negotiations happening constantly. And I think that's one of the things that we could all tune up a little bit. And while you're negotiating, try to do it in a way that you don't cut off any relationships.

35:57Don't go in for the... Don't go for the kill because you might win that one win. slice of the negotiation, but you will not set yourself up for future business with the person across the table if you don't do it in a productive way. And so learn to negotiate well and learn to negotiate well for all parties who are at the table. I love that. And to focus on the long game, because while you might become a really great negotiator, the long game is relationships and relationships. And people keep turning up in your career. So... again and again. So really wonderful advice. Thank you so much, Heather. I really appreciate your taking the time and sharing your wisdom with our viewers. Thank you, Ann.

36:39Yeah. And for our audience, if you've enjoyed this conversation with Heather Turner, I hope you will go to our website, which is DEIadvisors.org, for other interviews with industry leaders. Thank you. Thanks, Heather. Thank you.